标签： Trinidad and Tobago

On the eve of the first anniversary of her United National Congress (UNC) administration taking office, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar delivered a blunt, unapologetic warning to her political opponents and critics during an exclusive interview with local outlet the Express: “If you come for my eye, I will take your whole head.”

April 28, 2026 marks exactly 12 months since the UNC secured victory in the 2025 general election, ending a decade-long tenure of the previous People’s National Movement (PNM) government that left the Caribbean nation with soaring crime and economic stagnation. Referred to by the UNC as “KPB 2.0”, this iteration of Persad-Bissessar’s leadership marks a sharp departure from the more conciliatory approach she adopted during her earlier time in office.

In a wide-ranging 19-question interview, the 74-year-old prime minister outlined a new, hard-nosed governing philosophy rooted in data-driven decision-making and uncompromising action for law-abiding citizens. “My disposition is more stoic, hard-nosed and focused on helping those who help themselves,” she explained, rejecting calls for the passive “turn the other cheek” approach she embraced in past tenures. “I have no intention of trying to please everyone. My aim is to please the law-abiding people who go out every day and make an honest day’s work to positively contribute to society. It is either peace or total war, no in-between.”

Addressing widespread criticism that her confrontational tone is unbefitting of a head of government and undermines national unity, Persad-Bissessar pushed back forcefully, arguing that repeated concessions to bad-faith critics only embolden hostility. She dismissed most criticism as the product of personal bias, political allegiance and irrational hatred, noting that she only accepts input from qualified, fair-minded analysts. She rejected the idea of unifying with opposition factions that she accuses of pushing exploitative policies that would steal from hardworking workers to reward their political base.

Responding to questions about ongoing labor protests and fears of growing civil unrest amid worker dissatisfaction, the prime minister emphasized that legal protest is a protected right, but it will not shift her government’s policy priorities, which are rooted in what is best for the country as a whole. She pointed to her administration’s fulfillment of a key campaign promise: a 10% wage increase that has already been rolled out to more than 51,000 workers across the public service, national energy, and education sectors.

On the international and regional front, Persad-Bissessar has upended long-standing Trinidad and Tobago diplomatic norms by openly breaking with traditional neutrality to align closely with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, while taking an unusually firm stance against long-standing operating procedures within the Caribbean Community (Caricom). When asked about the diplomatic shift, she explained that the U.S. administration’s conservative, pro-capitalist policy framework aligns with her own, and that she expects the alignment to deliver tangible benefits: increased foreign direct investment, accelerated economic growth, and improved regional security against transnational criminal networks. She pushed back against claims of regional isolation, confirming Trinidad and Tobago has no plans to leave Caricom, but declined to publicly outline future negotiating strategies for regional reform.

Crime, long the most urgent domestic issue facing Trinidad and Tobago, has been a core focus of the Persad-Bissessar administration. The prime Minister expressed full confidence in her national security ministers Roger Alexander and Wayne Sturge, highlighting significant early gains: murders are down 42%, serious crimes have dropped 30%, and violent crime has fallen 32% from the previous administration’s highs. She defended the decision to implement two states of emergency, noting that while the measure is not a permanent solution to the country’s crime crisis, it is a valuable tactical tool. Persad-Bissessar also criticized the previous PNM government for delaying the measure until just before the 2025 election, using it as a political gimmick after more than 5,000 murders and 8,000 sexual assaults occurred on their watch. She declined to detail full future crime-fighting strategies, arguing that tipping off criminal organizations would undermine operational success.

When asked to rate her government’s performance after one year, Persad-Bissessar said that judgment should be left to the voting public, but acknowledged that the administration has made significant progress cleaning up the mess left by 10 years of PNM rule. “We have been there for 12 [months] and the fixes cannot be made overnight,” she said. “I do think we are off to a good start: We employed 15,000 people and got murders down by 42%, stabilised the economy with growth in 2027 projected at 3%.” She pointed to progress on the legislative agenda, financial management and national security as the administration’s biggest early wins, and confirmed she has not received any corruption complaints against her cabinet, which she described as corruption-free.

On questions of internal party governance, Persad-Bissessar said there is currently no leadership vacancy, and argued that political power must be earned rather than handed over. She added that the UNC membership will select the next party leader when the time comes, closing with another sharp warning to potential challengers: “if you come for my head, make sure you don’t miss!” She expressed full confidence that the UNC will win re-election in the 2030 general election.

Addressing criticism that some UNC ministers engage in unprofessional, distasteful outbursts on social media, the prime minister said she does not micromanage ministers’ personal expression, and that freedom of speech is protected within the bounds of the law. She noted that voters will ultimately hold ministers accountable for their behavior at the ballot box.

Looking ahead to the administration’s second year in office, Persad-Bissessar promised continued progress on job creation and economic expansion, alongside a ruthless crackdown on criminal networks and their associates that refuse to comply with the law. When asked about personal reflections on her 74th birthday, held earlier in April, she shared a quiet personal note: she mourns her late parents and loved ones, and urged all citizens to cherish their close family members. Closing with a sharp quip about persistent unsubstantiated rumors about her health circulating among opposition supporters, she joked that PNM fans seem to know more about her health than she does.

In a decisive internal election held Sunday, Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis has claimed victory in a head-to-head contest for the leadership of the People’s National Movement (PNM) Tobago Council, defeating rival candidate Kelvon Morris. The former Member of Parliament for Tobago West made history as the fourth woman to hold a top national political leadership position in Trinidad and Tobago, following in the footsteps of President Christine Kangaloo, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, and Opposition Leader Pennelope Beckles.

Speaking to reporters Monday outside the PNM Tobago headquarters in Scarborough, Cudjoe-Lewis called for unified action to rebuild the party’s standing in Tobago, noting that internal elections often create rifts that need mending. “My first priority will be reaching out to my challenger and every candidate who stepped forward to serve,” she said. “That work is critical to rebuilding our party, strengthening our connections, and repairing any damage done over the course of the campaign. We are one family, so we need to have those difficult conversations to move forward—we need every hand on deck to rebuild the PNM.”

Cudjoe-Lewis expressed that she feels both grateful and humbled by the outpouring of support from party members, saying she is fully prepared to take on the challenges of the new role. “I’m pleased, and I’m humbled that so many people placed their confidence and trust in me for this enormous task,” she shared. “I know this will not be easy. It will take serious commitment and discipline, but I am ready to get to work.”

With unofficial results showing she secured 63% of the vote—1,228 votes compared to Morris’ 730, ahead of the official release of full results—Cudjoe-Lewis emphasized that her victory is a win for the party’s grassroots base. She ran a people-focused, grassroots campaign centered on listening to rank-and-file members about their priorities for the PNM, a strategy rooted in her past experience as a youth leader and sitting legislator. “This campaign was about knocking on doors, calling members, and having the intimate conversations I’ve always had with our supporters,” she explained. “We connected, we listened, we engaged, and we showed up for the people of Tobago.”

Looking ahead to her first term as leader, Cudjoe-Lewis outlined an early policy priority: cleaning up and verifying the PNM Tobago Council’s membership roll to ensure more smooth internal elections in future cycles.

For his part, defeated candidate Kelvon Morris—who had earned the backing of high-profile PNM figures including former Chief Secretary Kelvin Charles and former political leader Tracy Davidson-Celestine—has extended a hand of cooperation to the new leader, saying he will fully support Cudjoe-Lewis moving forward. Morris framed unity as the top priority for the party after the election, noting that the democratic process had spoken clearly. “First and foremost, I want to extend my sincere congratulations to Mrs. Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis,” Morris said. “This is what democracy is all about: the membership has made their choice, and she has my full support, now and going forward.”

Morris pushed back against any suggestion that his association with senior party figures hurt his electoral performance, noting both candidates ran on a platform of party unity. “Mr. Charles and Mrs. Davidson-Celestine are valuable assets to the PNM, and I don’t believe my connection to them had any bearing on this result,” he said. “Nothing went wrong in this campaign. This was simply a case of members having two good options, and on this occasion they chose Shamfa Cudjoe-Lewis as their preferred leader. People make their choices based on their own priorities, and I am proud of the campaign we ran.”

Morris closed by reaffirming his unwavering commitment to both the PNM and the people of Tobago. “As we move ahead, my commitment to the party remains unchanged, and Tobago will always be my top priority,” he said. “I will play my part in holding the current leadership accountable, while continuing to contribute meaningfully to the development of both our party and our island. My commitment to the people of Tobago does not end today—it continues with purpose, responsibility, and resolve.”

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – In a continued push for diplomatic engagement with Caribbean nations following dramatic political upheaval in her home country, Venezuela’s Acting President Delcy Rodríguez touched down in Barbados on Sunday. This trip marks her second visit to a member state of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) since she took office in January, after a United States incursion into Venezuela resulted in the detention of sitting President Nicolas Maduro.

Rodríguez’s first Caricom stop came in early April, when she made a brief several-hour visit to Grenada on April 9. During that trip, she held closed-door talks with Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell and his full cabinet, an encounter an official Grenadian statement later characterized as having unfolded in a “cordial and constructive atmosphere.”

While official details of her current Barbados itinerary have not been made public, a senior source familiar with the visit confirmed to the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that Rodríguez is scheduled to hold one-on-one talks with Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley before she departs the island nation Monday afternoon. The source noted that the trip is part of a broader diplomatic tour of Caribbean states, saying “She seems to be making the rounds to some Caribbean countries.”

Despite the lack of pre-visit official details, Prime Minister Mottley released a public statement via her social media channels framing the meeting as a meaningful opportunity for bilateral and regional progress. “The visit will provide an opportunity for high level discussions on areas of practical cooperation and wider regional development,” Mottley wrote. She added that Barbados’s foreign policy framework has long been grounded in core principles of mutual respect, open dialogue, and results-driven engagement. “We continue to engage our partners with a clear focus on building relationships that can deliver tangible benefits for our people and the wider region,” she emphasized.

Rodríguez’s diplomatic tour of the Caribbean comes on the heels of a high-profile meeting last week between the acting president and former Trinidad and Tobago prime minister Stuart Young, who shared a photograph of their gathering in Caracas across his social media platforms. Young, who previously served as Trinidad and Tobago’s energy minister, wrote on Facebook that “It was a pleasure meeting Her Excellency, Delcy Rodríguez, Presidenta Encargada, of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela earlier this week.”

The meeting underscores the shifting diplomatic dynamics around Venezuela within the Caribbean, particularly for Trinidad and Tobago, where current Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar – who was declared “persona non grata” by Venezuela’s National Assembly – has a long history of open criticism toward both Rodríguez and the Maduro administration. Even so, Persad-Bissessar recently announced that Port of Spain plans to dispatch an official diplomatic mission to Caracas to advance negotiations over cross-border energy reserves, with the goal of securing what the government calls Trinidad and Tobago’s “just share” of the resources.

At the center of these energy negotiations are two key offshore gas fields. The Dragon gas field, which sits within formally recognized Venezuelan territorial waters but lies in close proximity to Trinidad and Tobago’s existing energy infrastructure, has long been identified as a critical potential supply source for the country’s growing liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. Development of the field has been stalled for years, however, due to persistent geopolitical tensions and sweeping international sanctions imposed on Venezuela’s energy sector. A second field, Loran Manatee, spans the two countries’ overlapping maritime boundaries, and while Trinidad and Tobago has already moved forward with development on its portion of the reserve, negotiations over Venezuela’s share remain ongoing.

When the United National Congress (UNC) took power in Trinidad and Tobago in April 2025, it inherited a national treasury drained of resources and a decade of systemic mismanagement left by the previous People’s National Movement (PNM) administration. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar laid out this challenging starting point and detailed her government’s early policy wins during a keynote address at the UNC’s 37th annual national congress, held Saturday in Couva.

Persad-Bissessar painted a stark picture of the economic damage the new administration inherited, telling assembled supporters that meaningful national recovery will require years of targeted effort to reverse a decade of damage. During the PNM’s 10-year tenure, she said, the country’s total national debt surged from $75.4 billion in 2015 to $144.7 billion in 2025 – a near-doubling of the national obligations. At the same time, overall economic output shrank by 20%, the country’s foreign reserve holdings were cut in half, and billions in public savings were withdrawn from state accounts.

Despite this weak starting position, Persad-Bissessar emphasized that the UNC has already delivered on core campaign promises within its first months in office. The administration quickly released a people-first national budget that cut the price of super gasoline by $1 per unit and eliminated value-added tax on all essential food items, policies designed to reduce cost-of-living burdens for working households.

“We restored fairness to a system where, for too long, ordinary citizens carried the weight of elite mismanagement,” the prime minister said. “Your UNC Government put more money back into your pockets.”

One of the administration’s most high-profile early achievements is a 10% wage increase for public sector workers, a policy the prime minister highlighted as a top campaign pledge fulfilled. An agreement between the Chief Personnel Officer and the Public Services Association (PSA) has already locked in the raise, delivering pay increases to more than 51,000 public workers: 17,000 PSA members, 20,000 National Union of Government and Federated Workers members, and 14,000 public school teachers. Persad-Bissessar confirmed that negotiations and planning are already underway to extend similar wage adjustments to other public sector employee groups. The government has also fulfilled its pledge to eliminate taxes on private pensions, a win for retired citizens across the country.

Beyond domestic policy gains, the UNC has successfully restored international investor and institutional confidence in Trinidad and Tobago’s economy, the prime minister said. Within its first year in office, the administration successfully issued a US$1 billion sovereign bond that drew 2.5 times oversubscription, with participation from more than 140 institutional investors across the globe. “That is a clear signal – the world believes in Trinidad and Tobago again,” Persad-Bissessar said. The government has also secured the country’s removal from both the European Union’s tax blacklist and the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) anti-money laundering blacklist, reversing diplomatic and economic damage from the previous administration and rebuilding the country’s global credibility.

As it works to resuscitate long-stagnant economic growth, the UNC government has placed a high priority on targeted social support for vulnerable and marginalized citizens, the prime minister added. The government has already disbursed $1 million in ex gratia compensation to families impacted by the 2022 Paria diving tragedy, a long-unresolved issue the previous administration failed to address. A wide range of ongoing social programs are delivering tangible support: more than 117,000 elderly citizens have received $3.8 billion in pension payments; 25,602 people living with disabilities have accessed $520.3 million in disability grants; 13,869 low-income vulnerable families have received $216 million in direct cash support; 12,614 people have accessed $75.7 million in targeted food assistance; and 2,808 people impacted by disasters have benefited from 1,232 individual disaster relief grants.

### Progress in Healthcare and Diplomatic Outreach

Beyond economic and social policy, Persad-Bissessar highlighted meaningful improvements to the country’s public healthcare system, long plagued by underfunding and access gaps. The Couva Children’s Hospital, shuttered for years under the previous administration, has been fully reopened and has already completed more than 600 same-day surgical procedures. Regional health authorities have expanded access to care across the country, doubling the number of operational public healthcare clinics and adding hundreds of new doctors, nurses and frontline medical staff to the understaffed public system.

On the diplomatic front, the UNC government has reengaged with global and regional partners at the highest levels to rebuild bilateral and multilateral ties, the prime minister said. She pointed to her own high-level meeting with United States President Donald Trump during the recent Summit of the Americas as a key step in repairing bilateral relations, as well as a meeting between Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Sean Sobers and King Charles III during an official visit to the United Kingdom. Persad-Bissessar came to Sobers’ defense amid recent controversy over Trinidad and Tobago’s objection to the reappointment of Caricom Secretary-General Dr. Carla Barnett, dismissing unsubstantiated claims that Sobers missed a key negotiating meeting due to seasickness as baseless rumor. The prime minister also highlighted a successful official visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which deepened long-standing cultural and economic bilateral ties between the two nations.

For the island of Tobago, Persad-Bissessar reaffirmed that equitable development remains a top priority for the UNC administration. The 2025 national budget included the largest ever allocation for Tobago, totaling $3.725 billion earmarked for local infrastructure and social programs. The long-standing airfare subsidy for the domestic inter-island airbridge remains in place, and the cabinet has not yet made a final decision on a proposal to add two new unsubsidized flights to the route. The national government is also working closely with the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) to advance a full slate of legislative and administrative reforms: addressing long-standing legal anomalies in the THA Act, exploring the creation of a dedicated Tobago Local Police Service, reforming the outdated alien landholding licensing system, maintaining the existing export licence for the Studley Park quarry, advancing planning for a new desalination plant in Charlotteville to address chronic water shortages, and resolving decades-long unresolved land tenure disputes for local residents.